The Last Lines From Philip Larkin’s “The Mower”
My written response to the prompt: What is your life motto, or what words do you live by?
Life is full of surprises. From childhood to old age, I don’t know that the “WOW” factor of existence ever really stops—for better or for worse. Even at twenty-five, I’ve had a fair share of surprises. From moving to Minnesota at age 11 to losing my job last week, There’s no predicting what can happen next. For someone with generalized anxiety, this existence feels, well, less than ideal. But, finding this poem shortly after a tragic surprise laid the groundwork for a new perspective on life.
**
The Mower
Philip Larkin
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.
**
Just weeks before my senior show, I got the news that a mutual friend of mine had died at nineteen. She clocked in to work at a local FedEx—one my brother had worked at years prior—and never returned home. She was shot.
It was that semester that this quote became the sail to the ship of my perspective, which is ever changing in the relentless sea that is—you guessed it—existence. For the first time, “while we have time” became undeniably real. The younger sister of one of my brother’s high school best friends was dead. Who could say that I wouldn’t be next?
From then on, life felt ever-increasingly temporary. My college friends had graduated, and that stage of my life ended just as abruptly as it started. I moved back to my parents house, only to move out five months later. In that instance, I was thankful for time’s relentless passing. Unfortunately for my parents, and this quote, I did not have it in me then to be very kind.
I started my first job, and, consequently, lost it due to circumstances outside of my control. In between those two things, my brother lost his house to a tornado, my boss lost his son to fate, and my cousin suffered a traumatic brain injury. The hard truth is the tragedies of life never stop—and each wave varies in intensity as it passes.
So what do we do in the face of tragedy?
We do what we can.
Despite the uncertainty that never ends, I can be kind. It feels elementary, I know. And this isn’t to say I take any of the circumstances above lightly. Life is hard and it sucks. Truly. But in spite of it all, I can still be kind. That will never be out of my control—no matter how high the tide gets.
This quote in particular resonates with me because of its urgency. We will not always have the time. So, in the moments when my finitude feels threatened, I’ve promised myself to be kind. When it feels like there’s nothing left to do, nothing left to say, or nothing left to achieve—be kind. For how large and small and limited our lives are, there’s no greater pursuit than kindness. That, I believe with all my heart.
